“Would you?”
“Yes, Lily.” He rakes his hand through his hair. “I care. I’d never put them in harm’s way.” He rubs his jaw. “You know why I teach Sulli how to climb?”
I shake my head. Paparazzi ask him all the time: do you want Sullivan to be a climber like you?
His response: fuck off.
“Because it’s a huge part of my life, and if I barred her from it out of fear, I’d be shutting out my daughter. My goal isn’t to push her to become a fucking professional climber. That’s her choice.”
My shoulders relax only a little. “Are you hoping she’ll choose climbing?”
He’s rigid. “I’ve only ever said this to Daisy, so don’t go around telling Lo and Rose and the lamp and the bathtub.”
“Hey,” I say, “I broke up with the bathtub long ago.”
Ryke almost smiles, but it vanishes fast. “After what happened…no. Fuck no.” He means the climbing accident where his friend died. “I hope she chooses something else. I’d worry about Sullivan. Every ascent where I’m not on the other end of the rope, I’d fucking worry, but like Daisy, if that’s what she loved, I’d let her do it.”
I must be grinning wide and uncontrollable because he looks at me weird again. So I say what I’m thinking, “You’re a worrier too.”
“For fuck’s sake.”
“You just admitted it. No take-backs.”
He sighs. “We’re not the same, Lily.”
That’s what he said when I called him a sex addict years ago. I know you wish I was, he once said, so I could join you in your little sex addicts not-anonymous club, but it’s not happening.
“You worry,” I say. “I worry. Worriers United, us.” I motion between our bodies.
He re-wraps his gum. “I’m not worried about an overnight camping trip at a little state park. I’m worried about my daughter falling from three-thousand fucking feet.”
Good points.
I grow hot, and I’m not sure if it’s my anxiety mounting again or just the heat in the room. I grab the nearest thing I can find—which happens to be a comic book on the couch cushion. I waft the glossy issue at my face, small gusts of air cooling me.
“Is it hot in here?” I ask. “I feel faint.”
“Sit the fuck down.”
“I am seated…sort of.” I’m still leaning on the armrest. “I think I’m just nervous.” I have to face the facts. Moffy will be attending his first-ever camping trip, and I should be thankful it’s with Uncle Ryke. He’s a wilderness pro.
Lo even said it was the best-case scenario since Ryke spends more time outdoors than indoors. In comparison, Lo can barely start a fire with a match. He has no patience for fire-making.
“What’s the worst that can fucking happen?” Ryke pockets his gum. Before I can utter the words, he adds, “Besides a bear.”
I slowly set the comic book back down. It’s Wolverine. Give me strength.
“Paparazzi,” I tell him. “What if paparazzi follow you and then give you hell in the woods where you can’t escape? It’s happened before, so it’s a rational fear.”
“Price and Declan are coming along. If something fucking happens with the media, they’ll take care of it.” Price is Daisy’s bodyguard. Declan is Moffy’s.
“What if Moffy doesn’t do well? I won’t be there to comfort him.” Ryke isn’t me. He’s said as much.
“Look, I promised Rose that if Janie freaks out, I’d bring her to the nearest hotel. I mapped it out. Same promise extends to you about Moffy.”
“Thank you.” My worry starts to subside, especially at the idea of Rose, my older and wisest sister trusting Jane’s life with Ryke. I bet she grilled him for a solid hour about safety.
I sink on the couch cushion, and Ryke leaves his duffel to take a seat next to me. I splay my hands on my abdomen, the baby kicking nonstop.
Ryke puts his hand on my stomach, feeling her wiggle around. He’s asked many times before if he could touch. I used to freak out by our physical interactions when I was pregnant with Moffy, but I’m much better now. So I always give Ryke permission.
“Are you scared?” he asks.
I frown. “Do I look it?”
“You look a little fucking tired.”
“She moves a lot and keeps me up at night sometimes.” She. Luna Hale. I’m a little scared to have a girl, but only because of other people. I don’t want them to hassle her the way they hassled Daisy. Future sex addict, they said about my little sister. Just because of me.
I have to believe that Luna will have an easier time than Daisy had.
I say softly, “I wish Daisy was going camping with you.” My sister decided to expand a section of Camp Calloway in the “off-months”—which includes paperwork and Skype meetings.
“Me fucking too,” Ryke says, “but she’ll have a good weekend with Sulli.”
I don’t doubt it.
While we wait for Lo and Moffy to come downstairs and for Rose and Connor to drive Jane over, all I picture are bears. Brown bears. Grizzly bears. I’m losing my mind when a polar bear pops up.
Ryke half-interestedly flips through the Wolverine comic.
I squint at him. “Remind me why we’re not going with you?”
“For one, you’re fucking pregnant.” He roughly turns a page, and it tears. Shit! He freezes.
I freeze. Lo is so possessive over the state of our comics. When I reanimate I whisper, “Stuff it in the couch cushion, he’ll never find out.”
Ryke checks over his shoulder before he lifts the cushion beneath his ass and slides the comic underneath.
“Lo can go with you.” I pick up where we left off. “He should go with you.”
“He can’t even light a fucking fire with a match, and he kicked a canteen into a bush the last time we went camping together. I love my brother, but he’d be more trouble than help. I bet you anything he doesn’t even want to fucking go.”
“He’d rather stay at home?” I thought he’d rather go with Moffy.
Ryke clears his throat like he’s hiding a secret. “Yeah.” What a lying liar.
I fasten the best glare I have, and it must do the job because he cracks under the pressure of Lily Investigator Hale.
“Look, I’m the fun fucking uncle who gets to take his niece and nephew on a camping trip. And it just so happens that it gives you and Lo all weekend to fuck each other as much as you want.”
My jaw unhinges. “That’s the reason this”—I wave my arms around—“is going on?”
“Why can’t you just fucking say camping trip?”
“Ryke,” I snap.
“Part of the reason. There are multiple fucking reasons, Lily.”
I cross my arms the best I can over my large belly. “I don’t want to fuck him.”
“Bullshit.” It’s one of the firmest bullshits I’ve heard all year.
I let out a long, heavy sigh. With my hormones raging, it’ll be nice to have more alone time with
Lo. I just don’t like the whole orchestration for sex. I constantly have to remind myself that this doesn’t make me a bad mom.
Most people would like alone time, not just sex addicts. Right? Right. Right?
I’m confusing myself.
“Thanks then,” I tell him, “for giving us the weekend.”
“I’m the fun fucking uncle. It’s what I’m here for.”
The door blows open. “MOFFY!” Four-year-old Jane shouts as she enters the living room from the foyer. “CAMPING TIME!”
I stand with Ryke.
Jane, in a pale pink coat, searches the room with eager eyes.
“He’s upstairs,” I tell Jane.
“Thank you, Aunt Lily!” She darts up the stairs, falling on the second one, before hastily picking herself up and shouting, “MOFFY!”
As soon as Rose sees us by the couch, she reroutes her course towards Ryke. Connor right behind her.
“Do you have everything?” Rose’s fiery yellow-green eyes wield a million threats.
Ryke returns to his duffel and casually stuffs his hands in his pockets. I resume my leaning-against-couch position.
“Yeah.” He taps his duffel with his boot as proof.
Connor gently sets a pink princess bag down beside the black duffel. He seems calmer than I imagined he’d be. He is sending his only daughter off into the woods with Ryke Meadows, but I’ve never been good at reading through Connor’s poker face.
“Are you concerned?” I ask him. “At all?”
He barely blinks. “That it may rain, yes. There’s a fifty-five percent chance.” Obviously he’s not worried about the possibility of bears or cameramen lurking behind trees.
That’s all you, Lily.
Rose is even subdued. No verbal threats about Ryke’s balls and penis. I cringe. Stop thinking about his dick.
Rose and Ryke did have a conversation yesterday about the camping trip. He was over her house, fixing a fence, and maybe that’s when he made the promise to bring Jane to a hotel if she freaks out.
Footsteps patter down the staircase. Lo enters the living room with Moffy and Jane on his heels. He dumps Moffy’s Black Widow bag on top of the princess one.